and so it begins...

Well!!! Where to begin!!! So its been 2 days since we left and we haven't had a chance to update yet - so ill fill in all the details ;)

Our last night in Cochin started with an epic party over on an island palace. What a feast! Cold beer, amazing martial arts and fire twirling display, wicked DJ and sick tunes for an awesome outdoor dance floor under the stars! What more could we have asked for? After sinking a few cold ones we retired to the mainland for the first day on the road.

The start of the race was so much fun. Seeing all 60+ rickshaws lined up and then filling the streets was a great laugh. Not long down the road we would come across people going all different ways, looking just as lost as we were. Eventually we made it out of the city and headed for the hills, and the town Munnar. Set in the tea estates high in the Western Ghat mountains at over 1500m, it was a welcome change to the heat and humidity of Cochin. Our rickshaw performed perfectly and we made it by sunset, just in time for some photos of the amazing veiws.

First thing this morning we headed east and found ourselves driving higher in the mountains, before a rollercoaster ride down the otherside, a descent of over 1000m. What a veiw!!! None of this was spoiled by the fact that we also broke down, and had no horn (which is the most important part of any rickshaw in india). After replacing our fuel filter and tightening the fuel line hose with some dodgy wire, and also tightening our air filter - she ran like a dream from then.

Once we descended from the hills we were blasted with the heated air of the plains all over again. We pressed on into Didingal where we found a very friendly gentlemen who fixed our horn, and we are now all fueled up, packed up, ready for a super early start tommorrow in the hope of making the coast and picking up on some lost time from today.

I'm busy typing in a pre-historic internet shop in down town didingal where i'm using a modern keyboard  attatched to what looks and performs like a 486... Hence i am not bothering to correct any spelling or grammar mistakes bcos it takes far too long to move the cursor backwards!!!

More news and photos to come, gotta get some sleep for a big day of driving!

last day in Cochin...

well we've spent a few days in Cochin now... all 3 of the team are sitting in the internet cafe writing our own versions of the blog update - so it should be interesting to see each others veiws. apart from Dec's almost disaster afternoon yesterday everything has been going well. An evil ATM stole Dec's credit card but lucky for us the people in Kerala are so friendly and helpful. We had a local guy helping us out with the rickshaw and he saved the day by interpreting and finally gettin the card back from the bank. Our homestay owner Benson has also been a legend. Last night we spent an hour sitting around the table with a map laid out discussing options for routes and places to stop and visit. People here are so genuinely helpful and interested in what we're doing. It must prove quite entertaining every few months when the Rickshaw Run rolls into town.

We're all gettin the hang of driving the rickshaw pretty well now. its not too tricky, just a bit different from anything we've tried b4. one team has allready been in their first accident while gettin a lift with a local on his rickshaw. they hit a motorbike and 2 people came off, i think the person on the back of the bike came off with a broken arm and the other person ripped the mirror of the rickshaw... could have been a lot worse.

Well its almost 10am here and we have to go pick up our beast for another day or driving and pimping, so we'll try to update one more time before we leave tommorrow. This afternoon is the cricket match against the locals which should prove to be quite entertaining. I think they've been training for months, but we'll be ready! Tonight we have the leaving party in an old palace on an island out across the bay. We have to catch a ferry over in the evening and then its party on!!!! Sounds like it will be an awesome way to end our week in Cochin...

Not long now...

Ok so here we are... Only a few days from flying out to start the race. There has been a bit of a lack in 'blogging' on our teams part, so I thought I would pull finger out and catch up all our dedicated readers on what's been happening.

So - we've pretty much raised all our charity money as of last week. This was acheived on the local Queenstown front with awesome support from local buisnesses with our charity raffle. After begging and pleading we managed to round up over $3500 worth of prizes to be raffled off at a local backpacker bar last Wednesday night. The evening went all and we managed to get ticket sales in excess of $1800!!! So our final night of fundraising is tommorrow with a Curry night at a local Indian resturant coming to the table with some discounted prices and an awesome location for our final farewell.